View full sizeRandy L. Rasmussen/The OregonianThe dining room at Northeast Portland's Belly, which closed in 2011. The space is expected to reopen as Carpaccio Trattoria, an Italian restaurant, by May.

What does an accomplished Italian chef who once cooked for Hollywood's biggest stars do for an encore?

If you're Francesco Solda, you open an 80-seat Italian restaurant in Northeast Portland.

Solda, who moved to Southern California from Italy in 1989, quickly established himself at the swank Montecito restaurant Pane e Vino. That's where he met Jason Priestley, the teen heartthrob and star of the hit series "Beverly Hills, 90210."

In 1998, the two partnered to open La Gondola restaurant in Carmel. The opening was attended by "Beverly Hills, 90210" cast as well as actor Clint Eastwood and baseball star Reggie Jackson.

As People Magazine noted, "Priestley, an oenophile who has some 3,000 bottles in his private
collection, helps buy wine for the restaurant. On opening night the
actor pitched in by uncorking more than a dozen bottles for surprised
customers."

Despite the press, the restaurant didn't last -- Solda says the quiet San Francisco Monterey Peninsula town couldn’t handle the influx of young and loaded celebrities flying up to the restaurant each week.

Solda returned to Italy and worked his way through the kitchens at several Michelin-starred restaurants. But when his girlfriend moved to Portland, he found himself following her back to the United States.

"Venice is one of the most beautiful cities, but the food is very simple," he says. "It's what we get from the lagoon. We eat sardines, we eat shrimp, we eat squid with black ink. Things that for us are normal. Eels."

Carpaccio Trattoria will feature eight different risottos made-to-order each night, from sausage and mushroom to shrimp and asparagus, as well as his frittura mista, an Italian classic of seafood, vegetables and lemon deep fried in a light batter. Solda plans house-made pastas and desserts, whole fish cooked in the wood-fired oven left behind by Belly.

But Solda says Carpaccio's real draw will be the ambience.

"We have an open kitchen, an open bar," he says. "We're going to interact with customers in a way that only I, as a Venetian, can do."